Sankt Georgen (Bayreuth)
Sankt Georgen is located north-east of the city center of Bayreuth on the top of a hill whose southern slope is called the Stuckberg.
[1] To the south it slopes down to the valley of the Red Main; to the west to the city railway station; and to the north-east to the industrial area of St. Georgen on the former Brandenburger Weiher (a large man-made mere).
[6][7] In the late seventeenth century Crown prince Georg Wilhelm had developed a passion for the navy on his Grand Tour to England and Holland, and this had a lasting impact on Sankt Georgen.
On September 2, 1702, Georg Wilhelm's wife, Princess Sophia, laid the cornerstone for the new planned suburb of Sankt Georgen.
Since Georg Wilhelm spent a lot of time that year as a general in imperial service in the camp in the Rhine Palatinate, his mother Sophie Luise initially personally took charge of the construction project, but she died in October 1702.
In 1708 the foundation stone for the barracks of the Grenadier Guard was laid, but the plan for a town hall opposite the church, outlined in 1709, was never realised.
[16] The eventual town hall was created by repurposing the buildings at St. Georgen 27 and 29[18] which had been joined around 1745 and then used as storage by the faience factory.
However Georg Wilhelm decided to make it the centre of worship for his newly created Ordre de la Sincérité and after its consecration it became generally known as the Ordenskirche St.
[19] As Margrave from 1712 to 1726, Georg Wilhelm ruled in an absolutist manner, emulating the example of Louis XIV and building up considerable debts.
[15]: 18 In 1706 he had an opera house built to the west of the Sankt Georgen palace, and in 1708 the infantry barracks on the southern edge of the settlement.
Friedrich III (1735–1763) 1741 ordered the construction of the Gravenreuther Stift, an early retirement home with its own church, which was completed in 1744.
At the same time, the mayor and the city council advocated a reduction in customs duties for Jewish traders, who represented a significant element in these markets.
[8] In the harsh economic circumstances of the Napoleonic wars, the people of Sankt Georgen increasingly wished to join Bayreuth.
In 1811 the town and the city were united by King Maximilian I Joseph of Bavaria under a single municipality, ending 109 years of independence.
[24]: 99 At the upper end of Brandenburger Strasse, the Royal Bavarian Councilor of Commerce Otto Rose (1839-1984) donated a sandstone fountain.
Due to the proximity of the main train station and the immediately adjacent mechanical cotton spinning mill with the ball bearing works outsourced there, the area around Markgrafenallee and Brandenburger Straße was particularly affected.
The following were destroyed by aerial bombs in April 1945: As in many places in the city, notable buildings were demolished in Sankt Georgen after the Second World War, including: Sankt Georgen had a railway station on the Bayreuth–Warmensteinach railway line which opened in 1896 and was the second most important in the city for a century.
After the turn of the millennium, the facilities were reduced to a minimum and the station, slightly moved to the east, reopened as a halt in January 2007.
